Department of Economics & The Ford School of Public Policy

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New press coverage in PBS News Hour and Huffington Post

The main reason I became an academic was to influence thinking about economic development, so I am always happy to speak with journalists and policy-makers about things I work on. I happen to have spoken in relatively quick succession in recent weeks with a couple of journalists who paid me the honor of citing my work in their writings.

The other week, I spoke with Laura Santhanam of PBS News Hour on a piece she was writing on the economic development benefits of migrant remittances. It’s a great article that combines data, research, and a great hook in the form of Dilip Ratha‘s start as an immigrant sending remittances home to his family in India. She cites work of mine on directing remittances towards savings in migrants’ home countries.

And on Monday I shared my views with Jonathan Cohn (who happens to be a friend here in Ann Arbor) of the Huffington Post on new data the World Bank has just released on access to financial services worldwide. Jonathan’s take (with which I agree) is that while rising access to financial services is a great thing, the gender gap in financial access (women’s access continues to lag behind men’s) remains troubling. He cites papers of mine on the positive impacts of facilitating formal savings access for rural households in Malawi and Mozambique.